Useless books!

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Useless books!

We've had lists of favourite books, poets etc. What we need now is a list of really useless crap tomes, you know the ones, badly written about stuff no one is interested in. Not quite heavy enough for a door stop, not quite thick enough to stop the bed wobbling, paper too rough for toilet use. In short completely and utterly without any redeeming features whatsoever, they probably won't even burn!

I offer my personal award for services to the destruction of the rain forests to DIY manuals.

Why? Because in my experience anyone that needs a book, (probably written by some idiot like Handy Andy) to tell them how to do a job would be better off spending the money on employing someone that knows what they're doing. If you need confirmation of this theory you only need look as far as the lists of TV programmes about DIY disasters!

ivoryfishbone
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my award goes to: the wedding dress diet
Mississippi
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Would this choice have anything to do with your ex becoming your ex?
ivoryfishbone
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oh dear me no ... of course not ...
Robert
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The self-help book that that contains the questionnaire that produces the diagnosis that my love-tank is running on empty.
Robert
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Also the person that loaned it to me
Mississippi
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Love-tank? Never heard 'em described like that before!
richardw
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i prefer "the armoured car of lust" personally
andrew pack
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In my old school library, we genuinely had books entitled "Coal-Hole Rubbing" and "The Art of Swedish Embroidery" Ivoryfishbones 'wedding dress diet' was quite poignant, like that author who was asked to write the perfect short story and wrote 'For sale, baby shoes, no longer needed' - I forget the name of the writer. Unless Ivory meant that the diet consisted of actually eating wedding dresses, which puts quite a different spin on it. Surely self-help books of any description have to go into the useless books pile. In fact - anything like, "How to Write a Novel" by someone whose name you have never seen on the spine of a novel. What's that about ?
ivoryfishbone
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andrew ... it was sweet of you to find the wedding dress diet poignant ... i have never eaten a wedding dress .. but that doesn't mean i wouldn't try one ... i believe in culinary adventure ...
andrew pack
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The word taffeta always sounds like it should be edible. BTW, if any American folk are browsing the site, can they please describe salt-water taffy for me. I've always wanted to know what it is. My guess is that it is like our Brighton Rock, but I'm not entirely sure.
writer
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What about anything by Jeffrey Archer? All the best Den
Carly Svamvour
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How about Danielle Steele - a very highly over-rated writer - I do like what they do with the movies though.
Du Lally
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How about 'The Mississippi Guide to e-tiquette'?
Roy Bateman
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I have to agree with Ole Man River's beef about DIY manuals - when did they EVER contain the information you really wanted? Like chapters on what to do when you drill through your cold water main/ nail your foot to the floor/ rebuild that hole in the cavity wall to find that the bl**dy cat's gone missing? Same with Andrew's comments on useless "experts." (Like those agents who reject your stuff with a thoroughly illiterate, mis-spelt letter!) Whoops, that's another hobby-horse. My own most irritating book infuriates me because it's ninety-nine per cent informative. It's called "You Must Remember This - Popular Somgwriters 1900-1980." Ideal for checking who wrote what and when, settling arguments, etc. But!! In all the thousands of songs, writers and films mentioned, there's no place for "As Time Goes By": surely one of the century's most widely known songs? Note the book title! Anyone else got a similar book - one with absolutely inexplicable omissions or bloopers? We need to know..
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